3 weeks ago

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Morning Five: 01.14.13 Edition

And then there were none. With Michigan and Duke going down over the weekend we are without an unbeaten team yet again as we are going on 37 years and counting since the last time men’s college basketball had an undefeated team. This year marks the second earliest point in a season we have been without an unbeaten team dating back to that 1976 season. We are pretty confident that barring some catastrophe or NCAA investigation Michigan will not be repeating the collapse that Clemson experienced in 2007 and became so synonymous with that program that it spawned its own word (even if it was later applied to the school’s football program).

While Michigan and Duke lost their first game of the season Syracuse may have lost much more as senior forward James Southerland was declared ineligible over the weekend for undisclosed reasons that some media sources are speculating is an academic matter. We still are not sure about whether or not Southerland can rectify whatever the problem is that led to this suspension and after last season’s Fab Melo disaster we can understand if Syracuse fans are having a sense of déjà vu, but this appears to be a slightly different situation particularly in that the team still has a chance to regroup. However, this has the potential to derail whatever chance the Orange had of making a national title run.

As if Rick Pitino needed to engender any more animosity from Big Blue Nation he may have done it by comparing his current Louisville team to his legendary 1996 Kentucky team, which is considered by many to be one of the best college basketball teams of any era. Ok, maybe Pitino isn’t saying that this group is as good as that Kentucky team or that they even could be. Instead he is merely using that group of Wildcats as an example of how this group of Cardinals should aim to play in terms of style and fearlessness if not the end result of dominance. We can take issue with the lack of historical perspective that some of his players (particularly Chane Behanan) have. Of course, as the article points out Behanan was only three years old when that Kentucky team was playing so perhaps he deserves a little bit of a break.

With UCLA starting to show signs of life again perhaps it is fitting that both of the players who have transferred from the program this season have found new homes. With Josh Smith having committed to Georgetown recently, fellow former Bruin Tyler Lamb has also found a new home in the form of Long Beach State. Lamb is not quite the talent that Smith is, but he does not have as clear of an underlying issue as Smith does (weight). Instead, it appeared that Lamb’s issue was just that Ben Howland brought in more talented players, which pushed Lamb further down the bench and ultimately off the team. We would expect Lamb to have a prominent role at Long Beach State although it is a big step going from a role player to the star, but Lamb will have the benefit of playing against lesser competition than he did at UCLA (save your Pac-10/-12 jokes).